Google IFSW-Ubuntu-Practitioner for free download 4.43MB needed.

For CPD on Advocacy see The Unison Guide to Advocacy for Mental Health Workers.

While drafted during the hospital closure programme in the 1990s it’s origins are noteworthy.

Originally, I Commissioned the work but it was crafted with Annie Frobisher, Ward Manager at the, then, Stanley Royd Hospital, Wakefield and the, then, 5 Towns Survivor’s Forum., based on the supervisory framework known as Six Category Interventions by John Heron.

On publication the work was credited to Dr Viv Lindow and Unison to ensure it’s widest circulation and literary standing.

Advocacy within Children’s Services, as with say the, then, Barbado’s Childrens Advocacy Services also in Wakefield in the noughties had a similar genesis.

The procurement and contracting of childrens information rights and representation services tends towards regionalism and can waste 12-18mths of, usually, 3 year contracts just bedding in. Build locally is my advice unless there’s a distinct need for a socio-legal approach that’s needed. Socio-legalism is only one option and great care is needed to ensure operational readiness with this type quasi Legal Formalism. There’s such a scheme in Liverpool, or there was.

I couldn’t help but share this:

If Advocacy raises from the Ethic of Caring, Of entering into a relationship with another and acting on the basis of our concern for them as a fellow human being (Abrahams 1976) How, does the Advocacy handle the Solicitation or Solicitude ~ is helping helpful? And, what happens when the conception of such Advocacy actually destroys that which it sought to protect. On who’s terms IS an Independent Reviewing Of-ficer, actually acting?

I remember chairing a s16 review and the feeling of rage, and disgust actually, at the very people advocating being completely at odds with anything the child wanted.

The abuse of the s16 review mechanism by predatory providers in competition with each other only perpetuates the very solicitation the child has been secured against.

Market mechanisms in Children’s Care show up this way. I sincerely hope that the Review lifts it’s head above the transactional and gets properly into the issues.

For cpd see Babette Babich on Solicitude in Heidegger.

btw I was of 1of2 to be the first into the High Security Psychiatric Estate following public inquiries into patient abuse. Understanding Advocacy necessarily requires an understanding of why Nurse Advocacy and Social Work Advocacy is institutionally getting harder ~ The Great Moving Right Show by Stuart Hall is a useful place to start.

I was asked, 20 years ago now, to write the Remand Management Strategy for a cluster of YOTs covering 3 MDC areas.

It included, primarily, setting up Remand and Bail Fostering Services and a Kinship Care Network.

The latter aspect, Kinship Care, was tagged (pun intended) to be part of the, then, Community Referral Scheme for first time offenders.

The Remand and Bail Fostering were integrated into the, then, ISSP Services as diversion from custody.

It took 3 months to write a technically crafted board level report on the, HOW, not Why. And 4hrs 26mins to secure the legal and democratic sign-offs. Which included payments for Remand and Bail Fostering.

Within 9mths all the services were up and running and successfully so.

The trigger for this was unanticipated and, at the time, highly contentious.

The local newspapers, immediately after New Year, were light on news, as is always the case.

They ran a front page ‘advert’ as a story, titled:

SHARE Your Home With A Criminal?

The phone was off-the-hook with prospective Foster Carers. And I mean in their hundreds.

Here’s the afterthought in light of Benjamin Zephaniah being rejected (hear his account on BBC R4)

Share your home with a Criminal ?
Data Barring Scheme, it’s algorithmical,
In reality such answers ain’t clear, they’re liminal
It’s a shame really,
Even Pitiful,
You’ve already taken what’s mine, calling it~ Philosophical,
It’s ontology,
It’s epistemological,
It’s empirical,
Yet, I am told,
For Yous,
Taking without Consent is unethical,
It’s not quite criminal,
It’s probabilistical,
Let me tell you,
It’s political,
Share Your Home With A Criminal !

Iep.utm.edu/care-ethics/

Courtesy of Prof Lionel Shapiro.

An age ago I defined commissioning as ‘ The purposeful management of the many and often vested interests of an organisations interest in meeting population, vulnerable groups and individual, family and community needs’ I called it Provider Evidence of Competency, Value, and Aspirations or PECVA in short. This was set assessed against Purchasing Expected Norms or PEN in short. The overall scheme called Better, Brighter Futures was a mandatory requirement for any organisation seeking to provide essential and specialist services previously the required of a Council or NHS.

It was utilitarian in nature but informed by, the then, competency framework of Social Work.

In reaching a decision about the ontological nature of Social Work I have considered what has gone before. The above scheme an attempt to integrate largely institutionally driven agenda’s that were otherwise incompatible. At the time the approach was heralded as ‘Gold Standard’.

So, why did it, eventually,fail? And, miserably so?

What are/were the lessons?

1. A Kantian approach to moral architecture, the Categorical Imperative was used along with Utilitarianism and a radical shift in confidence after years of Thatcherism. An appeal to an Ideal in a, then, cash rich environment matched the enthusiasm to invest in community owned enterprise and a withering of the State noless.

Imagine having so much funding you can’t spend it !!! Managing and pressure testing of newly commissioned services was though tough going. The newness of which saw previously cooperation morph into aggressive and competitive rivalry. I called time on this in 2007. By 2010 I having whistle blown, to the European Commission as they held the, then, overall competency, became unemployable. I was fuming which didn’t help my case.

2. So , I set about chewing over the errors, some of which are in comments above and elsewhere in this Review thread. I suggest that instead of a Kantian deontological approach a Heideggerian perspective on Being and being is, perhaps, suited. I suggest thus because Heideggerian thought is premised upon a notion of a ‘forgottenness’. A concealment and cover up. Professor Shapiro quickly saw that this, in using specificalities of Ofness in Social Work was, firstly, outside his more general intention and, secondly, he asked and quite of-viously so, where’s the Child gone.

3. He pointed towards the genesis, certainly in the US, of the rise of studies in the Ethic of Caring. Championed, initially by Carol Gilligan, a psychologist, and Ned Noddings, a Philosopher. They in turn built their work on the work of Milton Mayeroff’s book ‘On Caring’ He did so because there isn’t a Philosophy of Social Work, although I know Babette Babich has written on the Philosophy of Nursing and Brian Fay on the Philosophy of Social Science.

4. I accept, as one would, that the Review is called Children’s Services Review and, perhaps, would stretch too far his Idea of an Of-ness. Except, in the less abstracted world of doing the job the Ethic of Caring gives rise to Advocacy. And, even by proxy, being a social worker IS, in the Heideggerian sense, about actually Being a Social Worker. Being and being are loaded terms in Heidegger and it’d take too long to spell out their intended usage.

5. The Ethics of Social Work are, by necessity, actually about Being a Social Worker. Not social-working per se beit utilitarian or something else.

6. Here’s the rub. Pauline O’Reggio, in comments elsewhere in this Review thread, raised issues of etymological and historical significance. By significance I mean Big, as in massively so.

7. Heidegger thought is of itself an appropriation of Buddhist and Hindu thought and culture. The origins of an Ethic of Caring have their genesis in African thought and culture.

8. Our Black and Asian colleagues, for as long as I remember have asked their White counterparts to not simply listen but actually hear them. I am minded towards, Gil Scott Heron, and Whitey’s On the Moon. I am minded also that the very first poet to reach me was Benjamin Zephaniah who for no-fault of his own was barred from Adoption.

9. This Review has the opportunity to set the record straight and, finally learn something. The IFW is now, has, Ofness. Let’s celebrate the wisdom of our Black and Asian colleagues. But it must be done, NOW.

FOR CPD SEE

Voice of Care by Annette Bair, Virginia Held, Eva Fedar, Kitty Sara Ruddick, Joan Tronto and Elizabeth Spelman.

Let’s, hear from, and genuinely listen, to Pauline O’Reggio. And, in my experience of knowing her, Let’s hear from Kath Drescher, who as a White Middle Class woman, would have the competency and more, to spearhead a rallying call for Being a Social Worker.

This is me done. I’m not suited to and don’t have the skill set for such tough terrain. It doesn’t mean I can’t see the need for seismic shifts though and like The Lorax keep bashing on.

Thanks to CC for publishing and thanks to those of you who have read my comments too.

Interestingly, he is suggesting that there’s a philosophical gap that Kant in his Critique of Reason addressed, AND which IS
mentioned in Heidegger OR is covered by earlier moral theorists in their creation Of an Ethic of Caring.

It seems too circular and smacks of a dramaturgy to me. I will let the notions rest for a bit and get back to it later today.

I have just heard from Babette Babich and Bojan Radej regarding the use if an Of-ness, they rather unsurprisingly suggesting directly contacting Lionel Shapiro.

I await his reply although his wider work suggests that it’s the intention and conditions within which they arise to create the Of-ness within an (Of)fer are crucial.

If this is so the Contracting and Commissioner is really high end. The mechanisms for which are, to date, missing from detailed examination and scrutiny in the Review so far.

For me, Ofness and Offer, are now, and perhaps, irretrievably confused as one and the same. Of(fer) is both a transitive and intransitive verb and through ‘complex equivalents’ becomes an area of ‘extreme commensurability’.

This is structurally determined, as is happening in this Review, by presenting the Review as participatory and consultationary in appearance. The Thought Errancy manifests normatively by the acceptance of the narratives being used. Transivity, in economic terms necessarily equates the making of an Offer as Tendering and Contracting. This is what is meant by the Review being transactional.

This is achieved with and by the subject matter experts, in this instance Social Work institutionally speaks and individually with sw’s.

However, this is, if not recognised as intentional, at odds with the Ofness of the ontology inherent in the ethical standards of Social Work.

It’s tough ground to cover, especially when the day job is already tough enough. Not least because societal values are increasingly shaped and governed by an acceptance of a transactional way of living which is increasingly digitised.

This confuses Ofness with Offering (a service)

Just saying ?